Knitting

When the most important things in your life are in your head, the imagination can be a dangerous thing.

Like anything, the more you use it the stronger it gets, and mine can now stand up without me. Not only do I have fictional characters from my writing roaming around in my head - picking things up and touching things when I have told them not to - but they've been joined by imaginary men, created from online dating websites. In tentatively sticking a toe in the cyber dating water, I've taken what I normally do anyway - which is create a fictional character out of a few cursory facts I've picked up and get romantically interested in that instead - and then created men in my head that are so tangible that I've found myself taking them like little outfits on dates, holding them out and expecting the men to slip into them.

Which they haven't been able to, unsurprisingly: they simply haven't fitted. Three online dates, and not one has been anything even remotely approaching the man I created in my head. Which is not only disappointing, but leads me to a disturbing conclusion: where have the men in my head gone, if they don't actually exist in the first place?

"The thing is," I explained to my grandparents yesterday (they are very understanding about the whole online dating thing, although I suspect they find it all a bit pathetic. Because it is, mainly). "Well, the thing is, that these people I create in my head are so real, that when I turn up and they're not that person, I spend the first hour of the date in a kind of mourning. I literally spend the first drink at least missing the person I thought they were going to be, and realising that they are essentially dead because they were never there to start with. And I can't get over it: it's like dating during a funeral. I'm too busy waving goodbye to the man I created to talk to the man in front of me."
"And what were they like?" Grandad said: "as people?"
"Lovely. Not my cup of tea, but really lovely. But even if they were my cup of tea, I'm not sure I'd notice. I'm too busy comparing them to a cup of tea in my head."
"Mmm," Grandma said. There was a pause. "You know what you need to do?" she said. "You need to knit your own. That's what I did with your grandad."
"And look how well I turned out," my Grandad pointed out.
"Well," Grandma said, pulling a face. "You're not nearly as well behaved as you were supposed to be, but you'll do."
Grandad winked at me.
"I do prove to be a bit troublesome now and then," he admitted, and then he got up to go and get me another biscuit.

The thing is, I do knit my own. I knit my own soulmates out of thin air, and then feel remarkably surprised when they evaporate: even though it happens every time, and every single time they disappear like steam.

Almost every time, anyway. Last year I met a man who didn't disappoint me. When I held the little man-suit I'd knitted out, he didn't just fit it: he filled it, and then brought his own little matching hat and shoes to go with it. Everything about him was perfect, and every thing he did or said was better than anything he had ever done or said in my head in the six years I had already adored him from afar. Even the yellow smoker's plaque on his teeth was adorable, and the fact that he still wore invisible braces, aged 26, was somehow a delightful bonus: the curtain in front of the magician.

And the only time he ever disappointed me was when he got up at 4am, left, and I never saw him again.

I wasn't who he thought I would be, apparently.

The problem with knitting garments for your heart to step into is that every now and then you'll discover that somebody is holding one out for you, and you don't even realise it until you can't get it over your head.

Thankyou

What's amazing about blogging is that you can get on your computer - without, usually, even having gotten dressed that day, or washed your face - and you can moan your selfish, ungrateful little heart out when, really, you've got no reason to at all, and you still get emails and messages from complete strangers telling you to keep your chin up because they think you're wonderful.

I feel so very ashamed of myself. Thankyou. To everyone who contacted me via Facebook, or via email, or via this blog (and to my Grandad who rang me up and told me to get my arse round to his for a cup of tea because he was deeply concerned about my mental state): thankyou so much. I'm just a whiney, silly little girl who needs to get a grip. I have been given opportunities that people would kill for: met people, and had experiences, that other people spend their lives dreaming about. I've been given the chance to write a book - thanks to the neverending patience of my parents who have to put up with me lolling all over the house in various states of undress - and it doesn't matter if it's the worst novel ever written: I should be damn grateful to be given the time and space to attempt it.

Good Lord. There are people out there who have terrible, terrible lives, and I'm a spoilt, jumped up little twinkie who feels sorry for herself because she might look and sound a bit unattractive on telly for fifteen minutes. I am going to make a concerted effort to get over myself, and see the things that scare me as opportunities to work out how to make them not.

So thanks again. For showing me that I am a very lucky girl, and that the more inflated my head gets, the more important it is to keep my feet firmly planted on the ground.

A ticket to anywhere.

Every time I try and concentrate on something, somebody shouts walkies or shows me a biscuit and I end up spinning around and around in a circle.

Ten minutes ago, I received a phone call from my friends at the BBC. A phonecall that - while extremely pleasant and fun on the whole, because both girls at the BBC are extremely pleasant and fun on the whole - contained a spiky barb that got stuck right in my foot and sent me into various fits of panicked barking.

"Great news," Vari dropped into the conversation roughly half way through when I was relaxing and lolling around on my bed (this is where I spend most of my time these days. I've become an accomplished loller). "We've been given a full hour for the documentary, it's at 9pm on BBC 1 and they've brought it forwards to July the 1st!"

"Eh?" I said.

"It was going to be 40 minutes and 12pm in late Autumn, but the BBC love it so they've extended it and brought it forwards!"

"Eh?" I said again, no longer lolling in the slightest.

"It means you'll be a key central character, there'll be loads of air-time of you and millions will be watching," Vari said. "Isn't that fantastic?"

"Umm," I said, not wanting to sound ungrateful. "Can I call you back? I think I might need to go and be a little bit sick, if that's okay."

"Okay," she replied cheerfully. "Oh, and if it's alright we need to do some more footage now to show what you're up to. This could be your ticket out of here, you know."

After I had been a little bit sick - and it was not okay - I sat back down on my bed and tried to get my legs to stop wobbling. To put it mildly, I'm petrified. This isn't vaguely exciting: the only thing getting me through the BBC process was the knowledge that - as I hadn't gotten into the final - I'd be squidged into a three minute window, and by the time the documentary aired I'd be somewhere in Asia, spraying my huge, pus filled mosquito bites with antiseptic.

Apparently not. Apparently, it's going to be very, very public, and I'm going to be very, very much in England. Every second of humiliation - every single inch of under-arm that I forgot to shave before waving my arms enthusiastically around in the air - is going national, and it's going national straight after a news full of (probably) people dying of various animal-themed flus. Now - every time I close my eyes (and I'm doing that quite a lot now, in the hope that when I open them again either I'll have disappeared or everyone else will have done) - all I can think of is the umpteen (in fact, all of them) shots where I said or did something stupid. Shots where I cried, shots where I got dumped on national radio, shots where I ran about a field in shoes that were too big and therefore ran like a completely pansy-pony. It's all I can see. Never mind the fact that my hair changes colour - from bad to worse - consistently (and at one, key stage, goes bright orange): I'm wearing my pyjamas for the majority of shots. Something I really wish I'd cared about at the time, because I know I'm going to damn well care when half the country sees me in full baked-bean stained glory.

I didn't want this: I have never wanted this kind of attention. I wanted to be good at something worthwhile, not prancing around making dumb-arse comments like some little fame-hungry girl wearing ties around her breasts.

The worse part, I think, is now. The bit where I have to show that I'm not a loser: that I have mysteriously landed on my feet within the last few months, and now am a fully fledged person getting ready to fly. I'm not. I've spent the last two weeks feeling lower than I have in years: desperately procrastinating and trying to finish a novel I hate (it is awful), trying to get out of bed even when I don't see the point and unsuccessfully job-hunting when I can't even get a job sticking pieces of paper in to other pieces of paper. I haven't even been able to blog, because when I sit down at the computer all I want to write is Aaaaaarrrrrgghhhhh I succcckkkk. I'm broke, I'm single, my skin is a mess, I'm terrible at writing, terrible at making videos (see the air-balloon video for a good example) and I've never felt like such a failure. 

So a documentary of me saying stupid things and looking ugly is going to culminate in the voice-over: "Holly is still single, still living with her dad, still in debt, still trying to find work and still writing her piece of shit novel that nobody in their right mind would ever want to read. And look: doesn't she think she's all that?! Look at her prancing around and calling herself a 'writer'! Laugh! Laugh at the monkey!"

I'm scared. I'm really, really scared. I'm so private, and I don't want everybody knowing how I feel. I don't want everybody knowing what my fears are, or the fact that when I'm embarrassed I get a rash all over my neck and my chest. And they're going to know: they're going to eat their dinner, watching me stumble over all my words, and they're going to know. My loser-ness is going to go public, and I'll never be able to write again. I'll never be able to work again, more importantly. Who wants to employ somebody who thinks she's better than 'that'?

"This is Holly," my old boss said at a party I was at on the weekend. "She was a runner-up for The Best Job In The World, you know."

"Oh I know," the girl I had never met in my life before said. "I've seen the video and I read the blog. My mates read the blog too." And then she looked at me. "You're kind of infamous," she added.

My old boss laughed.

"Infamous?" she said. "Don't you mean famous?"

The girl I had never met before looked at me for a few seconds.

"No," she said calmly. "I meant infamous." And then she went back to her drink.

And that, I think, says it all. The only ticket I want or care about is the next one out of here. If somebody wants to send me one, I am going to put myself on the next plane: and I don't really care where it goes, as long as it's nowhere near a British television.

Genetics

"Is synesthesia genetic?" my sister rang to ask me this morning. "Because I think I've got it too."
I carried on eating my porridge. Despite the unseasonally warm weather, I get grumpy if I haven't eaten my porridge: and God help anyone who sneaks into my house and eats it for me (and then tries to sleep in my bed). I'll chase them right out into the woods.
"Don't know," I said eventually. "Why?"
"Well," Tara explained in excitement: "when I eat orange smarties, I can see orange."
There was a pause.
"And," she added in even more excitement, "when I eat yellow mini eggs, I can see yellow. Isn't that cool?! I think I've got synesthesia too. It must be a genetic thing."
"Mmm," I said, putting my bowl of porridge down temporarily. "When you say that you can see orange, do you mean that you close your eyes and the colour orange is visible?"
"Well... No. Not really."
"When you eat mini eggs, does everything flash yellow?"
"No."
"Do you mean that you can taste yellow and orange then?"
"Yeah, but I can tell the difference!"
"I don't think that's synesthesia: I think that's just called having taste buds."
"Oh." There was a pause. "But there is a difference right? Because Dan says they're exactly the same as the other smarties and mini-eggs."
"Yup, they're different: men are just stupid."
"That's good news then, at least. I've got working taste-buds! Whoop! And Dan hasn't! Whoop whoop!"

And then we high-fived each other on the phone (we have a verbal way of doing this I can't explain: it's been honed over the past quarter of a century) and proceeded to discuss in depth what it was that yellow mini-eggs taste of (because it's not lemon - which would be the obvious answer - and it appears to be slightly floral. The best we could come up with was "they taste like primrose, if primroses tasted like what you would expect them to taste like").

My sister may not see colours in chocolate, but she can certainly bring them to a conversation.

Disaster

After running around the house all morning screaming various swear words and throwing my shoes at walls, I have come to a sad realisation: my TBJITW video-making success was a fluke. Or - perhaps, if I'm being kind to myself - I still have many, many important lessons to learn. Lessons that I've learnt a little too late for my hot-air balloon ride, unfortunately.

My video is awful. I've edited and edited and edited, but there's nothing I can do: my camera skills are diabolical. Who knew you had to keep a camera still when filming? Not me: I thought that you moved it the way you move your eyes. Apparently not: what I've now got is the air-balloon version of The Blair Witch Project, except I'm in it and that's even scarier. I've managed to make a very peaceful, almost celestial experience look like I'm in the middle of some kind of air-disaster, and no amount of Sigur Ros music is going to cover that up. Shaky shots, close-ups of the inside of my nose, and lots and lots of wibbly pictures of the same field.

"Are you filming it on that?" the pilot, Kim, said when I got my little Sony camera out of my pocket.
"Yup," I said with fake bravado. "It's how I did the last one: it should be fine."
"Mmm," he replied: knowing, obviously, a whole lot more about filming than I did.

It's not fine at all. At all. The last one worked because it was still, close-up shots; even a Sony 7.2 megapixel piece of junk can handle that. Shots from the air? Held by an excitable, amateur, trembling hand? Nope. It can't handle that at all. You can almost hear the camera screaming: "UUUUGGHHHH. What are you doing? I was £99 from Argos: what the hell do you want from me? And why do you keep waving me about like that?"

I feel terrible. It's not even about me anymore: the Next Best Job is off, so I'm not applying for anything with it. I feel awful for Adventure Balloons, who gave me an amazing experience in the vague hope that I might be able to work my 'magic' with the footage. I feel like a bloody fairy who keeps shaking her wand and nothing but water comes out. The magic is gone, and I've got nothing. I am - and there's no doubt in my mind - a rubbish, rubbish film-maker. And writer. In fact, I deserve to be unemployed, frankly. I wouldn't give me a job either.

So what do I do??

I think I'm going to post it up anyway, and apologise profusely for it. To anyone watching, flying in a hot-air-balloon is much, much better than I've made it look. And then, when this is up and proof to Queensland that they made a stonking decision in not putting me through to the final, I'm going to go and practice and practice until I can produce something that doesn't make me want to cry with a sense of my own creative failure.

And the key to that, I think, will be keeping the camera still, not letting the BBC feature it and - for the love of God - not appearing in it myself at all. My presenting skills are shakier than my hands.

Who knew?

I received this email this morning: 'Due to unforeseen events in the Canadian Tourism industry, we have been forced to postpone and/or cancel the Next Best Job competition.'

Firstly, the timing of the devil: I was half way through editing my hot-air-balloon video when my inbox pinged. Secondly: 'postpone and/or cancel'? Doing both seems a little greedy. Thirdly: 'unforeseen events'? 

Poor old Dean Horvath: happily waking up in his mansion every morning, sending for the butler to bring him his gold-plated toast, and then - WHAM: the butler suddenly doesn't come.

'Where is my gold-plated toast?' Dean probably said this morning. 'Come to think of it, where is my butler?'

'You don't have one,' his cocktail-maker explained as he packed his bags.

'What do you mean I don't have one?' Dean cried. 'Where is that man with the black suit that brings me my breakfast, goddamit?!'

'He's gone,' the nanny explained, putting Dean's silver under her jumper. 'You can't afford him anymore.'

'Why the hell not?!'

'Because there's a recession,' the pool cleaner said, pouring cement into Dean's pool.

'A re-what-now?' Dean asked.

'A recession. It means that people don't have money for luxury holidays anymore, apparently. A lot of people don't have money for baked beans either.'

'Baked beans?' Dean said in confusion. 'Is that like caviar?'

'No,' said the personal pilot, unscrewing the wings from the private plane. 'Everyone's broke, Dean.' 

'Well,' Dean responded. 'That makes no sense. Can't they just sell a few paintings or something?'

'We're going to try,' said the silver-polisher, taking Dean's paintings off his walls. 

'This is outrageous,' Dean probably shouted. 'Why didn't anyone tell me?!'

'We thought it might blow over. Canada normally doesn't get involved in world politics: we thought the economy might also be exempt. Apparently not.'

Poor old Canada. Poor old Dean. The recession is picking off its victims one by one: apparently it just decided to chew up the upper half of North America last. It's a bit of a shame - seeing as I've already made my video and packed my bags with cheap shampoo that I was hoping to swap with the expensive shampoo in five star hotel bathrooms - but that's life. 

I'll finish the video off (it's not very good, to be honest: it is, as my friend pointed out, a little like the Blair Witch Project by air), and then I'll go on the Guardian Job site and try and find something that doesn't sound nearly good enough to be untrue.

Side-point

When flying in a hot air balloon, take another tip from me: wear sensible shoes. I pranced across the open fields like a gay little pony this evening, and it was remarked upon. (Indeed, the BBC caught it on camera, so I will be known as The Pansy-Runner - with my little toes pointed and my wrists held up and limp - forever.) 

They did tell me to wear sensible shoes, and I didn't listen: I have nobody to blame, therefore, but myself. 

And possibly Primark, for making such shoddy quality footwear. Damn £6 plimsolls. They are not conducive to a convincing display of athleticism.

Flying without wings*

When flying in a hot air balloon, take a tip from me: no matter how good it is, don't let the excitement force you into making the following, ridiculous comments to any camera:

1. 'I can't believe it: it feels like flying.'
2. 'Gosh, the sky is quite big isn't it.'
3. 'The houses look like teeny tiny houses.'
4. 'Aren't cows small from thousands of feet away.'
5. (On helping to fold up the balloon:) 'It's like trying to get the world's most annoying sleeping-bag back into its pouch.'

Sixty minutes of filming, and I'll be lucky if I can get one sensible comment out of myself.

On the upside, luckily, I think the footage is going to do the work for me. It was, without exception, one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. There aren't many childhood dreams you can honestly claim live up to expectations (the prospect of unlimited pocket money and therefore unlimited doughnuts, for instance), but this is one of them: and I don't care how stupid it sounds, it does feel like flying. It's nothing like being in a plane, and everything like being a bird. Specifically, I think, a kestral. I suddenly understood why they hover in the sky and swoop down to pick up a mouse; on a much larger scale, I was sorely tempted to dive in and pick up a cow between my teeth myself.

You see, obviously, what you expect to see - the local area from a long, long way away, predominantly - but you see it differently: you see it as one piece. The countryside looks like a whole, and not a series of fields behind hedges and huge houses behind even huger fences. Everything links up, as if England is just a huge green duvet that you can shake the ruffles out of. And you kind of want to nestle into it and fall asleep (except that if you did that, you'd definitely die). Without wanting to sound like somebody who waves a flag at the Proms, I've never been so proud to be English. Our fish aren't particularly pretty, but we've got a countryside like nobody else. I even saw somebody sunbathing with a jumper on. And you don't get much more British than that.

The amazing thing is: the ride is absolutely peaceful, and absolutely calm. Apart from the sporadic roar of the fire-thing (umm, I should probably have found out what that was called), and the occasional bark of a few dozen miniscule dogs, it is totally silent. You know how you look at a plane and it looks serene and focused - like a shooting star - and then you get on it and it's a hurtling mass of screaming, baby-spew-covered, furry-tongued horror? A hot-air balloon feels exactly the way it looks from the ground. As if it is simply hanging from a bloody large invisible string in the sky: not in a particular hurry to get anywhere, because the journey is far, far more important than the destination. If transport was The Young Ones, the plane would be Rick, and the hot-air-balloon would be Neil: ambling to the kitchen with a bandana round his head and no shoes on.

And I loved it. I loved it. When I was little, my favourite dream was that my bed could fly out of the window, and I could just lie there and look at the world beneath me. This evening was just like that: except with perhaps slightly fewer cushions, and I had to stand up (I was extremely lazy as a child, clearly). I guess some dreams you just don't grow out of. And tonight I felt five years old all over again. And as blissfully happy as I knew I would be.

So: thankyou, Adventure Balloons (http://www.adventureballoons.co.uk/). I shall try and make a film that does you justice. If you ever decide to branch into the flying-bed market, just let me know.




* Ahah: I made a bet with a friend that I couldn't get a Westlife lyric into my blog. Read it and weep, boyo.

A natural high

I'm so excited I can barely sit still. In fact, I'm tapping away at my computer, half standing, with my foot going up and down.

Tonight, I go up in a hot air balloon. I'm filming the video for TNBJITW, and the kind people at Adventure Balloons agreed to a free flight (thanks, partly, to the BBC, who are coming to film my 'next adventure'). Suffice to say, I cannot wait. I've wanted to do this since I was a teeny tiny kid, and if I was a puppy right now I'd be spinning around in circles and being moved away from expensive rugs.

I know what I'm doing, film-wise, but God knows how it will turn out. I never really know until I've done it: my last video turned out pretty much how I wanted it to (considering the equipment I had; a bad workman may blame his tools, but I'd like to see a carpenter make a wooden box with a spoon), but I have no idea if I can pull it off twice. Once is a fluke; twice requires a little more skill.

Time will tell. At least there won't be a problem with smiling for the camera in this one: I don't think I'm going to be able to stop.

500 Word Short Story About Me, written for TBJITW

If I don't let this go, it will die in a folder on my computer: dark, lonely, unread and trapped with a load of miserable, angsty old poetry I wrote as a teenager. So I'm opening the cage. No writing deserves to get stuck in electronic eternity with a sonnet about milk bottles.

Fly, my little (salmon) pink bird: fly. 

(Remember as you read that this little bird had to include: personal details, family, background, local area, education, employment history, what is most important to me in life and who I would take to the island. It was not a bird that ever had much room to grow wings, let's put it that way.)

My story starts with a snowflake.             

I was born at midnight on the 7th of December, 1981, and on the same night began the heaviest snow storm the UK had seen in a hundred years. Mum claims that we arrived at exactly the same time - in utter silence - but dad says that if this is true, it is the first and last time either of us has managed to stay quiet for that long.      

Growing up in Welwyn Garden City was no mean feat for an awkward, freckled child who had a habit of wearing white ankle socks and correcting the grammar of adults.  My younger sister - like me in many ways, but two years behind and with sharper teeth - spent most of our childhood trying to bite anyone who commented on my social skills.  It wasn’t until I left school, bought a ticket around the world and returned a year later - with decidedly more freckles, the much needed ability to make friends and no socks at all - that my sister was able to stop fighting.  

The following four years were spent having my grammar re-corrected. 

By the time I left Bristol University with a Masters degree in English, I knew that I actually knew very little; in my graduate job at a top London PR agency, I discovered that I knew even less.  During my two years there, I wrote a lot, met some of my best friends and drank far, far too much coffee. 

 

Which was great fun, but somehow not quite enough.  Dreams are like teenagers: they make a lot of background noise, but if you leave them to their own devices they’ll sit on the sofa, doing nothing and shouting at you when you’re in a different room trying to focus on something else. Seven months ago - when the din finally became unbearable - I resigned from my job and moved home to write the novel that had been hollering at me for as long as I could remember. Which has made me happy and fulfilled, if considerably poorer. 

What matters most to me are the things that have led me to where I am now: family, courage, and the energy to always prod my dreams when they’re getting too lazy to move.  To never ignore them, even if it’s easier.  To get them off the sofa and out of the house, even if I’m scared of what will happen when they leave. 

The island job is my next dream: one that the people I love would regularly visit. But it’s also a dream that would give me the space and opportunity to continue writing, and the freedom to keep making new friends (perhaps losing my socks again in the process).  So it would be a dream I would go into alone to begin with.  As most dreams are. 

And who knows? 

This story started with a snowflake.  Maybe the next one will begin with a grain of sand. 

Leaps of faith

Job hunting is a little like an Easter Egg Hunt - in that everyone wants the same prizes, and everyone is prepared to spend a long time looking for something tiny - except that it's no fun at all, it's not that easy to spot the good ones and you usually end up with something you don't want at the end of it. I've already made myself feel sick, and it's barely dinner time. 

I'm simply going to hope that the Easter bunny hops along imminently with a basket full of fantastic options and hands me an egg/job, just like that. Why is that unlikely?

I asked Father Christmas to find me a soulmate, and look how that turned out.

Stage fright

Hey, was a message I got a few days ago from a number I didn't recognise. Reading your blog thingy. It's interesting.

Umm thanks, I sent back. Who is this? 

There is, after all, no right way of asking this question: they're either somebody you've deleted, or somebody you don't know, and neither of these options is a good one.

It's me! mystery texter replied, rather obtusely. Which didn't help me much: although it did narrow it down to being definitely male, so I ignored it. This is usually the best way to get a proper response from a man.

Sure enough, he cracked: it turned out to be an ex-flame who I had neither seen of nor heard from in at least 18 months. We're not even Facebook friends: that's how little we ever wanted to see each other again.

I stared at my phone for a few seconds, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. 

How did you know about it? I asked eventually.

Oh, I'm not stalking you, he sent back. I was googling the word Holly for another Holly, not you, and your name came up so I clicked on it.

I frowned at my phone again. I've always wondered, actually, what I would say to an ex-boyfriend who ever caught me stalking him online. I now know that 'I was googling your name for another person, not you, and your name came up' doesn't sound even remotely convincing: that's not how the internet works and everyone damn well knows it. You have to put in a surname or you don't get squat: in my case, you get 73 million pages about plants and Holly Willoughby.

Right, I said. Oh, I said. Then I left it: it's a romantic ball that fell in the lake a long time ago, and this princess has no interest in jumping in to go fetch it again (which is probably why he felt the need to contact me: they can tell, you see). 

You've not updated it in a few days though, he added when I'd been silent for half an hour. Everything okay?

I stared at my phone in increasing alarm, and then turned it off in fright. He hadn't stumbled across it at all: he's reading the bugger. A man I'd shooed into the box in my head labelled Dead As Far As I'm Concerned now knows... well, not everything, but certainly more than I would want him to. Enough to make him think my life is interesting, and - frankly - that's too much. He didn't even think that when we were dating.

So: Is everything okay? I asked myself. Not really, actually: no, I replied in my head. Now I've got stage fright.

And that's where I've been for the last few days: cowering, electronically, in a corner. (Okay, in real life I was freelancing and going to the pub and eating dinner with my sister, but electronically I was hiding.) I'm petrified, and - as the word suggests - I've been converted to stone: I can't write to save my life. 

People are now reading this bugger of a blog, and I'm suddenly scared. Where I normally just smash out a post in a few minutes - and don't even re-read it - now I'm stiff with fear, and I'm erasing, erasing, erasing. I've written four posts in the last few days that aren't online, because every single one has gone in the little picture of a bin in the corner that represents a real bin, except you don't get to tear your work with your teeth first. 

My mum reads this. My grandad reads this. Friends, ex-friends, strangers, potential employers and ex-boyfriends now, apparently, read this. And I'm suddenly terrified. How can I write anything good enough? How can I keep people interested? More importantly: how can I write anything without offending or upsetting someone, or without exposing myself to someone I don't want to expose myself to? I'm in a little box, and the things I can't talk about have suddenly become much, much stronger than the things I can. Which leaves me with bugger-all creative freedom, and this makes me panic, and the panic means that I freeze up and I can't write. Thus: silence. Thus: an empty blog, and - worse - another temporarily abandoned novel (when I can't write it stretches across all of my stuff like a really nasty rash). 

So, I've decided: the box is coming down. It has to. I had to do it consciously for TBJITW, and now I've got to do it for myself. I will write what I want to write, when I want to write it, and I will just have to risk upsetting people, or boring people, or failing. I will have to risk exposing myself to people I do not want to expose myself to, because otherwise I will end up exposing nothing, and writing without honesty is like a kettle without a spout: it makes a lot of noise but you get nothing out of it but a lot of steam. And, frankly, there are quite enough whistling blogs out there already without adding another one that just exists to make the writer look good.

So I'm turning off the lights, and I'm closing my eyes. Until the stage fright passes, I'm just going to pretend that the audience isn't there at all. That it's just me, on a stage, with my silly little lines. 

And if you love me, don't heckle from the sidelines. It only makes me forget what it was I wanted to say.

A brick in the face

How many books do you think you have to write before you get published?

It's not a hypothetical question. I say this, because I've been locked away in a net-less house for the last week, trying to finish my first novel. And - having read it over - I'm almost entirely convinced that it'll never see the light of day, and will be limited to a special wheeling-out every year on birthdays and Christmases when I can't afford to buy presents ('is this another copy of that bloody manuscript? I've got four now. No, I don't care that the front covers are all different colours: it's the same manuscript, Holly. I'd prefer bath salts, frankly.')

The problem is: everybody knows that an award winning, critically acclaimed book is - above all else - subtle. It suggests, it winks, it hints. It creates a knowingness between reader and author. And, above all, it makes the reader feel clever. Even if, sometimes, it goes straight over their heads (Life of Pi, I'm talking to you).

Which is all very well and good, and absolutely right and correct. I sat down to right the most subtle of all novels, I can tell you. So subtle, that people would put it down and walk around for days thinking 'what the hell was that all about?' and yet saying 'intriguing, very intriguing'. But I couldn't do it. One day I might be able to, but right now? If my poor little monster of a book ever gets pushed out into the garden, it won't have so much as a Richard and Judy sticker slapped on it.

My book, in short, is as subtle as a brick in the face.

I blame Shakespeare. If in doubt, always blame him: most things are his fault anyway. The problem is, that after 27 years of loving him, reading him, watching him, studying him (for those who don't know me personally, I have an MA in it), some of him has seeped into me. None of the brilliance, obviously.  None of the genius, none of the talent. But some of the drama has emptied itself into the middle of me, and then I write and: WHAM. There it is. My characters aren't even vaguely Pinter-like. They scream, they shout, they laugh, they make terrible, terrible jokes, they cry (by God do they cry), they die continuously, and every so often they try and be funny at exactly the wrong moment. And I can't do the blindest bit about it.

'Behave,' I tell them as fiercely as I can. 'Can you try and do something a little bit low-key? Maybe a paragraph or two where you just, you know, stare at a wall or something?'

'No,' they say. 'That sounds terribly dull. We'll do what we like, thanks very much.' 

Which is all I can expect, really, from characters that I created. They're little bits of me whether I like it or not, and they will not do what they're told.

The thing is: the book you want to write and the book you end up writing are two very, very different creatures. The book I had in mind was subtle, light: hued like a rainbow. Sober, but in a very gorgeous, spirit-lifting kind of way. The book I've ended up writing is a big emotional casserole: part tragedy, part comedy, part domestic battle, part Greek-pathos-roller coaster, with a few carrots floating here and there even though nobody sensible likes carrots. 

But there's nothing I can do. A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about how - after a certain amount of time - the true self will out (and then I made a bad joke about Will Self and a possible title for his next novel). If that goes for reality-show-type-programmes, then it certainly goes for writing a book. Because you're not just doing it for a few weeks: you're doing it for months and months and months. Worse, you're emptying yourself and your imagination out into it, and there is nowhere you can hide. I am not a subtle person: my book is therefore not subtle in the slightest.

When I'm about to panic, though, I remember that subtlety is lovely, but the reason that literature sticks straight into the middle of me like a flag pole is because it can move. The books that I carry round in my head and dip in to now and then on long journeys (and when boring people are talking to me) are not the clever, obtuse ones. No: it's the ones that make me cry. The ones that make me laugh. The ones that engage my heart, and not my head. King Lear, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Wuthering Heights. If you're going to be subtle, be so subtle that it feels like a perfectly white room with a red butterfly in the middle, like Waiting for Godot. If not: show us what you're made of.

So, yes: my little book may never see anything but the insides of cupboards belonging to various members of my direct family. And it'll certainly never win any prizes. But you know what? I read it yesterday, and it made me laugh. It made me cry. And it's everything I'm made of. As for subtlety: I'll leave that to the people who can do it properly. 

If I can't do a white room with a red butterfly, I'll do a red room with a white one. And the white butterfly will be singing its heart out. 

GSM

A few days ago, I decided to take the romantic bull by the horns, and became a fully paid up member of Guardian Soulmates; otherwise known as GSM, which sounds like something you don't want to put in your food. (When I say 'fully paid up' I should probably clarify that I didn't actually pay: I persuaded a friend to buy me a 3 day subscription, and I have yet to pay him back. Somebody paid, though, and I think that's all you need to know.) 

It's been an extremely interesting process, actually. A couple of years ago it would have been distinctly taboo for a normal, sane, relatively attractive person to online date, but in the days of Facebook and Twitter and so forth it seems totally natural to take the meat-market of a Friday night down the pub and put it a computer. 

And, strangely - however modern it is - the same rules still apply. You can see who has checked you out, you can see who keeps checking you out without actually approaching you, you can see who isn't interested (they don't 'star' you into their favourites box) and who is (they do). Just like in real life, there are men who don't have a clue about how to approach a girl: too confident ('I thought I'd save us both time and message you first'), too anxious ('I know I'm not hot enough for you, but I thought I'd try anyway'), too damn weird ('here's a poem I wrote based on your profile information and pictures'). There are men who know exactly how to approach a girl (my favourite: 'Good God, Marry Me?') but - sadly - shallowness kicks in and you just don't want to kiss them. And then there are a very, very few men who you do quite like, but who don't even read your goddamn email.

It's a fascinating site, though. It says a lot about the dating scene. The top female entry tends to be a very, very sultry looking girl who has one line of profile, while the top male profile is very very long and has one photo of a scruffy looking guy with facial hair. I'm currently at number ten, which is pretty good going (although I'm not going to give myself any airs and graces: I'm there in spite of my photos, rather than because of them. You wouldn't believe the amount of emails I've had telling me 'I'm not their normal type but I made them laugh so they thought I was worth contacting'. It says a lot about men that there is a distinct note of surprise in these emails that a girl could possibly say anything remotely funny). 

Further, if GSM is an accurate representation of the single population out there, then apparently we all like visiting art galleries on Sunday mornings, enjoying a good glass of wine, discussing music and politics and travelling in our spare time. (Which is a bit of a shock, actually, because when I go to an art gallery on a Sunday morning I see very, very few GSM types there. Perhaps they all get there before me: I do also like a good lie-in.) We're all quirky, intelligent, interesting and attractive, and we all have a soft spot for opera and stilton. We are all very, very funny - of course - with sharp minds, great bodies and absolutely no emotional baggage. I have yet to find the profile that says I'm on here because when my ex left me I lost faith in the world and myself and the opposite sex, and now I'm just a ball of insecurities, so please, please, please sleep with me and verify me again? Please? Just once. I'll buy dinner.

Ironically, that would probably be the profile I would email straight away: I've always liked a broken man. I'm a big fan of saving people.

Now that my 3 day subscription has run out, it looks like I may have gotten a couple of dates out of it, potentially, but will I meet my soulmate? Unlikely. Very, very unlikely. My soulmate is currently in Tibet somewhere, recording an album made purely from the sound of cutlery, writing a novel and teaching orphans: all while also being very, very naughty and defiantly beautiful, even though he has no hair (it's a Tibet thing. I'm not sure why: nobody in Tibet has hair in my head). He's not online on GSM, perving on women during his lunch break (with a cheese and tomato sandwich in one hand and his building pass in the other). 

But hey: I'm not in Tibet right now either. So I'm not going to count out the possibility of accidentally finding someone who wants to go with me. 

I'll just have to make sure they know how to play a knife and spoon properly first. It's a soulmate requisite.

Big Cats Part 2

So, my sister texted me this morning, imagine a huge, claw-y tiger running at you. He's growling, he's hungry, he doesn't like blondes.

I peered at my phone. Bank Holidays do funny things to my family: they're all bloody teachers.

Mmm, I texted back. Imagining.

He's got you by the throat. He's throwing you around.

Mmm.

You still sticking to the fact that ignorance is scarier?

I decided not to respond to this message. I do not appreciate being mocked at 8.30 in the morning.

So, my sister texted again (she doesn't care if I ignore her: she's my sister), imagine a man Tiger with a gun running towards you, shouting. He doesn't like blondes either.

Why would he be running if he has a gun? I texted back. He should stay still if he has a gun.

It's a spiky gun. That's not the point. Ignorance is still scarier is it?

Whatever, I texted back in a sulk. 

Would you agree that sometimes you talk shit just because it sounds pretty? 

I stared at my phone, bottom lip pushed right out.

Yes, I agreed eventually. Sorry.

So, Tara: here's my apology. Ignorance is not scarier than tigers or Tigers. I'd rather be stupider than the day is long than attacked by a large cat or a man with a gun (running or not). Alright? Happy now?

You'd know all about ignorance, though. You're a teacher. Mwahahaha (don't text me at 8.30am, woman. Grr).

Hurrah!

It appears (see below post) that it is a genuine employment opportunity, which is fantastic because I was starting to feel foolish in my enthusiasm. Apparently, they didn't receive my email. 

Which makes me wonder: perhaps the men who don't ring me simply got my phone number wrong? I may have to ring them all and check.

Bring on the new competition. :)

PS

Am currently trying to contact the man from TNBJITW. He's not responding. There is also no deadline, no way of uploading videos and no criteria. Which sucks, because not only have I come up with a cracking idea, but I've also managed to secure sponsorship for it (almost).

Could it be that I am being naive again? Is it a real job, and a real campaign, or am I being suckered? Time will tell. But I'm not doing anything about a new video until I find out.

Large cats

Sometimes my absolute stupidity surprises even me, and I'm used to it.

My plans at the moment largely revolve around: finishing my book, quickly, and going travelling. This now encorporates a volunteer scheme of some kind, because I have selfishly decided that I need to balance out my karma after TBJITW me-me-me-ness by caring about other people for a change. At the moment this is probably one of the most me-orientated things I have ever done: it's primarily about making me feel like a good person, if I scratch the surface. However, I'm pretty sure that when I get out there and am actually confronted with people I have to care about, I will be able to see past myself for a little bit and actually throw myself into doing something for the genuine benefit of somebody else.

Where I go, however, is the problem. I know diddly squat about geography, and realised last night that the three places I have thus far pin-pointed (Peru, Nepal, Sri Lanka) have all been pin-pointed because I know somebody who has lived there. Sri Lanka is currently looking like the best bet, simply because it looks like it actually does help people (orphans from the tsunami), and because it's on a beach. I haven't lived on a beach before: I'm quite keen to try it.

Anyway, I decided to email IBB, who - by complete coincidence - has just finished a teaching post in Sri Lanka.

Is it good? I messaged him yesterday.
Amazing, he messaged back. Really amazing. So rewarding and beautiful.
Okay for a girl on her own? I asked.
Yeah, fine. You'll get stared at coz you're white and pretty but just ignore it. Oh, and watch out for the Tigers.
This, I thought, was the second time somebody had talked about tigers when I mentioned Sri Lanka. Dad had said something about tigers too.
Oh come on, I emailed (after writing the obligatory: 'I'm pretty? Aw shucks.'). How vicious can they be? I'll carry a ball of twine around with me, and just hope that I only get approached by the little fluffy ones.
There was a bit of a delay in between that email and the reply. I presume he lost his internet connection. Technology in Sydney is always a bit touch and go.
Hahaha, he emailed back eventually. You always make me laugh. There was a pause, while I worried about IBB's sense of humour, not for the first time. I think he mainly laughs because I'm posh and British, actually, and he thinks I'm like Gwynyth Paltrow in all the films where she's playing a posh British person. Then I get another one: You know that Tigers are the rebels who are fighting out there, right? Guns, murder, etc. Not ones with paws.
I stared hard at the screen. No, I thought. I did not know that. I thought I was being warned away from particularly large cats.
Ahaha! I sent back. Of course! What do you take me for?
And then I came off messenger and spent the rest of the morning on Wikipedia.

Maybe I'm being naive, but I still think I should go. IBB managed it, I can manage it too. They wouldn't let volunteers go out there if there was a genuine risk to their safety, would they? Anyway: frankly, the fact that I clearly know so little about the world just proves to me that I need to get out there, come what may. I need to experience, and stop asking restaurants to 'cook my fish all the way through. All the way through, please'. I need to open my mind.

After all, there are no tigers - or Tigers - out there that are as scary as utter ignorance.

Field of Dreams

Every mum has a saying or two that drives their kids up the wall. A saying that is so oft-repeated and said with such fervor, that you end up screaming "stop it! For the love of God stop saying it!" before you hit 15 years old.

One of my mum's favourites is: "If you build it, he will come." This, for those of you who avoid Kevin Costner the way that I avoid Kevin Costner, is from Field of Dreams. She's taking the quote out of context, obviously (she's an English teacher: that's what they do best). 

"What?" I'd shout at her, aged 18. "I'm not building a flaming baseball pitch for Ray Liotta, mum! I've told you a million times, it's not going to happen!"

Mum would stoically refuse to be drawn into any kind of literal discussion. Again, she's an English teacher.

"If you build your life," she'd say with a knowing smile that drove me nuts, "then the one you are waiting for will turn up."

"Don't care," I'd shrug at her in a sulk. "Don't want him to turn up anyway."

The other phrase she loved (possibly because I spent my teenager years slamming them) is: "When one door shuts, another one opens." "Opportunities," she would continue, "come in all shapes and sizes."

"It doesn't make sense, though," I would point out. "Sometimes all the doors slam at once. Sometimes they're all open. And then what do you do? How do you know which one to go through?"

"You just know," she'd explain in her Guru Mother Voice. "You just know."

"It's like flamin' Alice in Wonderland," I'd mutter darkly, going into my bedroom to play Radiohead as loudly as my stereo would go. "And we all know what happened to her."

Strangely, though, both points are based on the same concept: taking any opportunity that life throws at you, and simply getting on with it. Building, even if you don't know where it will lead you. Having faith that you're going in the right direction, even if you can't see the path you're on. (And both sayings could be easily used in a furniture store advert.)

So: I was contacted today - along with the other 48 short-listed applicants for TBJITW - with another opportunity: The Next Best Job In The World. Along with a public wild card, the 48 of us have been asked to apply for a new position with Mason Horvath: a luxury travel company that specialise in Once-In-A-Lifetime experiences. The position is six months as an Elite Travel Correspondent: travelling the world, experiencing amazing adventures and writing/blogging about them. And being paid $50,000 dollars to do it. Another 60 second video is required, and yet again I'm in competition with the very same people. 

Ironically, this job is actually better than the Queensland one: for me, anyway. Where the Queensland job meant staying in one place for six months, this is travelling around the world; where the Queensland job had limited activities (snorkelling, scuba diving, reporting on fish), this has activities that range from dinner on The Great Wall of China to Ferrari racing in Italy to picnics in the Sahara. 

So, I'm taking my mum's advice. I am going to keep building, and I'm going to keep heading through open doors, and taking every opportunity that is open to me. As long as I have the imagination to keep dreaming, and the energy to keep going for them, I will pursue that field of Kevin Costners. And I am absolutely going to make a new video, because you turn your nose up at adventures at your peril.

Mum was very pleased when I told her about TNBJITW (an even clumsier acronym). "Now that sounds more like it, Holly. No climbing trees at all. This one could really, really be right for you. You'd love a picnic in the desert, wouldn't you?"

"Still risk of sand in your sandwiches," my dad said warningly. "But probably a risk worth taking," he admitted as soon as he heard the word 'Ferrari'.

"Stop talking about sandwiches," my mum snapped at him. "Holly doesn't like sandwiches much anyway."

And then she stopped and smiled at me.

"If you build it, he will come," she added, for no reason whatsoever, and I found myself leaving the room in a strop all over again.

So, it didn't take much thinking about. I'm going to keep building, and writing, and dreaming. Of course I am. And I can only hope that Ray Liotta doesn't turn up at some stage and start lobbing balls at me.

Dead frogs

At the weekend, I sat down with a good friend I hadn't seen for months and - after a few beers - decided to dissect the disastrous date I had a few weeks ago. Girls do this, you see. Not because we're obsessed with men (which is what men like to assume), but just because we like working things out and analysing. It's a game for us, you see, and it's a bit like discussing football: we ponder the decisions, the moves made, the dynamics of the entire evening, and work out why the winners won and the losers lost. We open the situation up like a dead frog, lay it on the table and have a good poke around, laughing as we do it.

"Come on then," Jess said, sipping her Sol and moaning about the smallness of the lime in the top: "spit it out: what did you do wrong this time?"

I rolled my eyes yet again, and got ready to defend myself. And then I stopped, pushed my lime into the beer (slightly smugly: it was much bigger than Jess's) and bent my head.

"Quite a few things," I admitted reluctantly. "I told him his band was crap for starters. And then when he told me he played the guitar, I told him I couldn't hear any guitar. And that the singer was kind of nasally."

I hadn't remembered this, actually. When I was busy blaming him for being a bastard, it didn't occur to me that I might have been nasty first.

Jess shook her head.

"Never, ever, ever insult a man's musical abilities," she said sadly. "First rule in the book. So that was strike one." 

"And then he told me something very, very tragic about his past, and I laughed."

Jess laughed.

"Yeah, like that," I said miserably. "Not because it was funny, but because I was so embarrassed. He had hinted at something, and I assumed it was something really crappy - like a teenage breakup - so I teased him about it. And then he told me, and it was so bloody awful and horrific and I was so ashamed that I had teased him that I burst into shocked laughter."

"Jesus," Jess breathed at me. "Nice work, Smale. Laugh at a boy's painful past. Okay, so that's strike two, three, four and five."

"And, to make things a bit worse, I also wore my First Date Outfit."

"Which is?"

"A long, black, baggy, high necked dress. And flat shoes."

Jess stared at me for a few seconds.

"Why the hell would anyone wear that ever, even to a funeral, let alone on a first date?" 

"Because I guess I'm scared of being used for sex."

"Well," Jess said, getting up to order another beer (and complain about her lime). "That outfit will certainly do the trick. Men on a date are supposed to fancy you, you know that right?" 

I mumbled something, picked the label off my beer thoughtfully for a few seconds and then laughed again.

"It's me, isn't it Jess," I said, in sudden realisation. "It's not them at all: it's me that's the problem."

"Aw, Hols," she sighed, walking around the table to kiss the top of my head. "It's amazing how good you are at some things, and how phenomenally crap you are at others." 

And then she went into the pub to help get me drunk.

So, instead of blaming Lady Luck and the Bastardness Of Men, which is what I normally do, I've decided to look at myself. Some people are crap at running, some people can't spell, some people can't put colours that match together. Others are just very, very bad at dating, and I - it seems - am one of them. 

Which means I'm just going to have to practice. And the next time I cut open my dead frog of a date, I'm going to make sure it's them that killed it, not me.

Tree Climbing

"Are the voices back?" my mum asked in concern on the phone this afternoon. I had my eyes closed: it's extremely unhealthy to sunbathe with your eyes open. UV damage etc.

"What are you talking about?" I replied, scratching my nose (could feel freckles popping up). "They never went away."

"What are they like?"

"Perfectly friendly. Very interesting, actually. And they're not mad voices: just conversations. Totally normal. It's like being in the pub, except you're not actually in the pub."

"Oh. Can I say something?"

"I have no doubt that you will anyway," I sighed, "so yes."

"I'm glad you didn't get through to the final. Does that make me a bad mother?"

"Yes." I took a sip of full-fat Coke (am no longer going to be on telly in bikini, so will never again touch a diet drink. They taste of metal). "I'm glad too, actually, but I would also be a bad mother. Why are you glad?"

"It wasn't right for you. You were never a tree-climbing kind of girl."

"Hey!" I put my drink down crossly. Being told what kind of 'girl' you are or are not is one of my least favourite past-times. It's almost always an unpleasant revelation. "I've climbed plenty of trees, mother." 

"Name one."

There was a long pause while I tried to remember climbing a tree. I couldn't. I remembered leap-frogging a stump once, but that didn't really count: especially because I did it wrong and ended up with splinters up the insides of my legs.

"Climbing trees," I said with dignity, "is over-rated. You climb up, you get stuck, you cry with embarrassment and then somebody has to come and get you down again. I've watched the cat do it plenty of times."

"Point made. So what's the plans now?"

I closed my eyes and grew a couple more freckles for a few seconds.

"Am going travelling," I decided lazily. "Before summer. I'm set on that now."

"Think that's an excellent idea," mum said, "as long as you don't go anywhere dangerous where you're likely to get murdered. But, baby, I'm going to miss you," she added sadly.

"Of course you will," I replied chirpily, lighting up a cigarette. "What's the point in having a mum if they don't miss you when you go somewhere?"

Mum, as usual, was right. I was never a tree-climbing girl: when everybody else was clambering up the branches, I would throw myself against the trunk with my notepad and write a poem about it.

So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to stuff as many envelopes as required to leave the country for a good, healthy chunk of time, and see as many things as I possibly can. I'm going to pack my bags and go on my next adventure. For what is life if not a lurching from one kind of happiness to another? 

Anyway, I thought as I smiled in the sunshine (just before the sun went in and I had to put my jumper back on in a sulk), there are thousands of trees out there that I still need to sit under.

Top 15 Reasons to Be Glad I Didn't Make The Final For TBJITW

1. I can now attend my grandad's 80th birthday party, and can do so without my aunts and uncles asking if I'm "too famous to talk to them".

2. Heat magazine will no longer be interested in the state of my thighs, and ex-boyfriends will find it difficult to sell their stories (newspapers don't care that "she never, ever puts the lid back on the toothpaste"). 

3. I will still be able to moan about the weather, which will make conversations with strangers and the newsagent much, much easier to initiate.

4. I can talk and think about something other than TBJITW. Eventually. (Not right now, obviously.)

5. I can continue frequenting the local swimming pool, and therefore can continue getting in to scraps with the biddy in the fast lane who refuses to accept that she is a middle lane swimmer.

6. The BBC will have to cut me out of most of the documentary so that they can focus on the winning Brit, which means that it is unlikely that the pot-noodle session ("Why are you single, Holly?" "Dunno: because I'm kind of annoying?") will be aired on national television.

7. I won't get burnt, which means that my skin won't age too quickly, which means that I will continue being ID'd until I'm 87 and my face folds inwards on itself like a cat's cradle.

8. Men will not try and marry me for my island, or my £70,000, or my book deal, or my all round aura of success, because I now have none of the above.

9. I was genuinely happy for my competitors, and therefore revealed as a kind and generous person who appears to have no real ambition at all.

10. I can say the words fuck, bugger, bollocks and bullshit in my blog, without worrying that I'll be penalised by Queensland judges. Not that I want to, particularly, but it's always nice to have the option.

11. I can wear my pink penguin pyjamas without worrying that the BBC will try and film me in them.

12. I won't have a ridiculously good looking pool-boy, which means that I will be able to focus on more important things: like looking for another job that might also require a ridiculously good looking pool-boy.

13. My friends feel sorry for me, which means that they will forget the horrific voting process that little bit quicker.

14. I can finish writing my book, which will keep the voices in my head quiet for a bit longer.

15. I can finally admit to having voices in my head without simultaneously demonstrating that I lied on my psychometric test ("do you ever see things that aren't there?" D: All of the time). 

And the wildcard is:

16. I can now explore the world the way I want to - and write about it the way I want to - rather than the way that somebody else wants me to. Which is a pretty good feeling, because I'm not entirely convinced that I would have been able to toe the line properly anyway. I've never had much of a talent for obeying orders.

As my dad texted me at midnight last night: Who needs a bloody island anyway? Far too much sand. Gets in your sandwiches.

Exactly, dad. Exactly. And I do love my sandwiches.

The Final Countdown

DadaDADA, dadaDADADA, dadaDADA, dadaDADADADADA, my friend texted me this morning.

What's that? I texted back sleepily. I've never been very good at working out tunes from 'das'.

The Final Countdown, she messaged back. I sensed a little bit of crossness that I hadn't already worked that out.  

Europe? I asked. I'd say that's more derdleDERDER, derdleDERDERDER, derdleDERDER, derdleDERDERDERDER to be honest.

Disagree. Can't hear any Ls at all. 

Definitely Ls. Can hear Ls. 

Whatever. It's tonight, right?

Yes, it is tonight. I know this, because I couldn't sleep last night, I couldn't eat breakfast this morning, and my hands are actually shaking. It's like A levels all over again: if I knew that I couldn't retake them, that a camera crew would be filming the whole thing, and I didn't have a gap year to look forward to afterwards. I'm a nervous mess, to be honest. In fact, I'm deeply concerned that I'm about to get in a car and drive to Bristol, because - in between vomiting into the drink holder and gripping onto the steering wheel until my fingers are bruised - I might end up hurting somebody. 

The idea is that between 11 and 12 tonight, the winning finalists will be called from Australia. Between 12 and 1, the losers will be rung (presumably with the message: "Hi, loser. You're a loser. Bad luck, loser"). Which means that for an hour I get to sit and stare at my phone, getting increasingly depressed, and then I get to spend another hour not staring at it and drinking a row of shots that I will have lined up especially. All with a camera pointed at me, and "are you going to be sick?" asked every few minutes. It is my idea of hell. (Well, it would be my idea of hell if I was also forced to eat egg and speak in French at the same time.)

Anyway, at least this hell is limited (unlike the real hell, which - if reports are accurate - lasts for quite a long time). So I've got it all planned out. Drinks, no dinner (too nervous), more drinks. Phone call. Cry. More drinks. It's a complicated plan, but I think it's the one that's going to work for me. 

It's been a blast. This blog will remain the same, except that I might take the 'top 50' bit off the top (the bit which, if you remember rightly, I accused a hacker of putting there to start with). And I won't talk about TBJITW. At all. There are some things you just have to let go of, and if the adventure ends here, then the adventure ends here. No point crying over spilt milk. And if it continues? Expect fewer posts about builders, and a lot more posts about colourful fish and the state of my thighs in a bikini.

So, for now, I leave you with goodbye. Whatever the outcome of tonight, and however many times I vomit, I will always be the Write Girl.

Thankyou

On the final night before I find out the results for TBJITW, there are a lot of people I should thank for getting as far as I have done. It's only polite, really: without them, I would not have been able to experience the last few weeks at all. (And, when people started moaning about the voting process, these were the people I gently aimed them towards. "Their fault," I said, shaking my head sadly. "Blame them.") 

So, thanks to: my friend Claire, who put up with me shouting "No! I have to be in the bottom left corner. Bottom left" every couple of minutes; my grandma, for shooting the pool scene (it wasn't, as Hertbeat FM suggested, "clearly a hot man"); my dad, for getting his jeans dirty because I demanded that he knelt in a puddle for the sake of art; Tom, who filmed the beer scene, ad-hoc, even though he had only  just met me and wasn't quite sure what I was aiming at ("is this supposed to rhyme or something?"). 

All of these people grinned, put up with my bossiness and - amazingly - at no stage in the last four weeks said: "I'm going to get money out of this, right?" So, thankyou, all four.

Having watched the film again (it plays in my head, sometimes), I have also realised - however -that I have been missing a massive thankyou. A note of gratitude that should have gone out long before now. 

New Order: without you, I would not be in the top 50 at all. It is impossible to listen to Ceremony without feeling lighter and better; using it as my backing track - and therefore imbibing my video with one of the coolest, happiest, most enigmatic songs that has ever been written - meant that, I think, a little bit of it rubbed off on me. I am in no doubt at all that my video stood out from 36,000 because of it: you can't hear the track and not smile or want to dance. Even better, at no stage in the last four weeks have you tried to sue me or get the music removed, and for that I will be forever grateful. 

So, to the friends and family who helped me: thankyou for your time, your vision and your never-ending patience with me. And to New Order: thankyou for the music.

Fool's Gold

This morning, I'm off to buy every single newspaper I can get my hands on. I'm convinced that the world would be a much happier place if news was intermingled with pranks and make-believe every single day: partly because it makes it feel like the whole country is laughing together, partly because it makes the rest of the news seem a little more balanced, and partly because it makes everybody actually read the news with their brains switched on, just in case they're being tricked. Which is the way news should be read, at all times. Because - having worked in PR for two years - I can say with some certainty that we often are anyway, whether or not it's April the First.

Last year, there was a photo of penguins, migrating. The year before that, it was a giant mushroom. This year, Goodness only knows what they'll come up with. April the 1st is like being involved in a Roald Dahl story, and I can't think of a world I'd rather be in. It's almost as good as Christmas. 

The Joys of Jeremy

I sat down five times today to continue writing my book, and five times I stood back up again after three minutes and told nobody in particular that I couldn't really concentrate. "I'm not in the right space," I explained to the builder passing through the living room, who looked immediately concerned.
"I'm working on it," he replied tersely. "Installing a new shower doesn't take five minutes you know."
"Head space," I clarified. "I'm in limbo, you know. Imagine the day before Christmas when you were a kid. Could you ever focus on anything?"
The builder shrugged.
"Not much to focus on, when you're a kid," he pointed out reasonably. Which was fair enough: as was his pithy "nice work if you can get it" comment when he woke me up by banging on the door for fifteen minutes at 9.30am this morning.

The right space for my head this afternoon, apparently, was in the corner of the sofa with a bowl of pasta and The Jeremy Kyle Show. Despite having been out of proper work for six months, you'd be surprised how rarely I watch television. Very, very rarely. It was a bit of a treat, actually: like gorging on six Easter Eggs all at once and not being shouted at for it because it's Easter and you're allowed. And, frankly, the show was incredible. So simple, and yet so brilliant. Members of the public came on, exposed their darkest secrets, screamed at each other, cried a lot, allowed Jeremy (oh, Jeremy, how I love you) to patronise them for a full twenty minute slot, and then thanked him for it.

Tara, I texted my sister after ten minutes. I couldn't eat my pasta, I was too excited. Why have we not been on The Jeremy Kyle Show? I asked her.
Because we have self-respect, she texted back immediately.
Do we? I replied. DO WE?

Admittedly, my husband has not left me for my mum recently. And no, I'm not having a problem with pathological lying, drugs, or fidelity. I haven't beaten my boyfriend in the last few weeks, and I don't fancy the next-door neighbour's dog. At all. But does this mean I can't go on Jeremy Kyle? Does it? I can't see how it can't be slotted in to my every day life. There must be some stage at which - mid argument - one of these people turn to their beloved and say: "You know, darling: I think that we should take your pornography problem on national telly and tell everyone about it. If you're lucky, I'll cry. And if you're really, really lucky, I'll make you do a lie-detector test that you will fail, and then I'll cry again. And possibly hit you, and cause the sofa to fall over. All while Jeremy gets right up close to both of us and tells us how disgusting we are as human beings." And, in response, the beloved must stop spitting at them long enough to say: "You know what, my sweet? That sounds like a lovely way of spending a Tuesday afternoon. Perhaps we could go for an icecream in the park afterwards."

So I've decided that there's no way I should be discriminated against, just because my life is actually kind of alright in comparison. I want to be shouted at by Jeremy too.

"Dad," I shall say when he has a go at me for leaving the pasta spoon on the surface and not wiping up the tomato sauce. "I understand your pain: do you think we should take it on Jeremy Kyle?"

"Tara," I shall say when my sister wears a skirt and it looks significantly better than it does on me. "I feel that you are undermining my sense of self. Would you like to go on Jeremy Kyle and discuss it?"

"Date," I shall say to the next unfortunate mug who asks me out. "I can see that you are embarrassed by the fact that I just inadvertently smacked my head on the bar while I was putting my bag down. Do you think that this is something Jeremy would be able to help us with?"

And they will all, obviously, jump at the chance. "Golly," my dad will say. "What a cracking idea. Perhaps we could discuss your refusal to shut kitchen cupboard doors properly as well."
"Excellent," my sister will say. "And while we are there, we can discuss the time you told me Santa wasn't coming, and then jingled bells outside my room and shouted No, not stopping here."
"Awesome," my date will say. "Perhaps we could get married on set too? Get it all out on telly."

So that's what my plan is for tomorrow afternoon. I'm so used to ringing the media - what with two years in PR and three weeks of shameless self-promotion - that it will be easy.

"Jeremy," I shall say (they will obviously put me straight through to the man himself): "I've got quite a few stories. Which one do you want?"
"Any old thing is fine," he shall reply, throatily, "as long as you promise to cry on national telly."
"Oh Jeremy," I shall laugh. "I've already done that for the BBC. I'm a natural."

I cannot wait. Just two more days to kill, and if I can just get mum to tell me she doesn't like the way I make coffee, that's Thursday's show sorted out as well.